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FOOTNOTES:
The Tryslmaistan Jellese, called the Drapeta Umor in the universe of
Pastel, have no limit on lifespan. They are biologically immortal, as
are all native life forms of Tryslmaistan. This does not mean that
they do not have an average life span, based on the probability of
horrific accidents, being killed, or other mishap, but if they are
able to sidestep poor fortune consistantly, there is no biologically
decreed decline into weakness, dissolution, and finally death.

Although
the local physics makes life far more difficult for the Jellese,
this basic fact remains true for them even in the universe of Pastel.

Dr.
Godan, the most famous scientist of his age, and the head of the
Nakimono Floating Research Island of Myrmidon in Tryslmaistan,
eventually ended up just another slave of the humans, when the
movement to organize an Roman-like empire began in Pastel.
Eventually, as the centuries passed, and history was distorted and
forgotten, rewritten to suit political need, the greatest scientist
of ancient Myrmidon became simply 'Fetchenevets', a nanny passed down
from generation to generation within the Bister household.

In
Probos Bister, Fetchenevets found a kindred soul, and began teaching
this child the ancient science of Myrmidon, the knowledge of the
multiverse, and of the calculations which describe it. In return,
Probos found it impossible to allow the continued enslavement of the
Jellese, and assisted them to rise up against the humans, and
eventually to escape en masse in captured airships.

Now,
decades later, Probos Bister is a political criminal beyond any
other, sentenced to permanent imprisonment, his very name an insult
in human-controlled Pastel.

But
Probos is also, with regard to the Introitus Project, the most
valuable man alive, and it was from his old notebooks and journals
and papers that Dr. Meiun Nakimono, Dr. Hannya Nakimono, Dr. Ransei
Aoi, and many others, were able to work out a technological approach
to opening a path between universes.

A
technology gradually invented, over centuries, by a Jellese nanny in
the household of the Bisters, a Jellese whose true name had, over
great time, and dark ages, become deified.